Also Recommended: MAL recommends Kanokon and To Love-Ru. We recommend none of these.

Notes: Based on the seinen manga of the same name, written by Akiyoshi Ohta, with art by Munyu, serialized in Comic Alive. The "chu!" at the end of the Japanese title is a pun, combining 授業中jugyouchuu "in class" and ちゅう chuu "kiss". The manga has been licensed in North America by Digital Manga.

Rating:

See Me After Class

Synopsis

Honors student Yuuki Kagami has enrolled in his dream high school, but due to a mistake by young teacher Ayana Kakinozaka, he has been assigned to an all-female dorm. To make amends, Ms. Kakinozaka decides to help Yuuki avert potential expulsion by having him cross-dress and becomes his self-appointed live-in guardian and figure of "inspiration", whether he wants it or not.

Review

I often distrust promotional anime as they are all too often pilots for franchises that just never get off the ground for whatever reason. This is no exception - here's a 2012 promo one-shot that has not led to a subsequent series. This may, however be a good thing, as See Me After Class is exactly the sort of creepy wish-fulfillment garbage that shouldn't get greenlit for further animation.

There's all sorts of issues with this thing from the get-go, from the issue of a mistaken dormitory assignment being somehow the fault of the *student* and lending inherent risk of expulsion, to the school allowing (possibly even encouraging) a teacher to live with a student on school grounds, or the fact that said teacher is actually first seen onscreen in the initial cold-open scene in bed with said student and her giant mutant breasts have popped out of her negligee. Which sounds like wish-fulfillment, but becomes creepy as hell if you mentally swap the genders of the characters involved -- if this had been a boys dorm and a girl had to dress as a boy and a *male* teacher offered to live with her to "take responsibility", there'd be an instant vigilante gang of moral guardians with knives and pitchforks at the ready, right? This is a stark reminder that shows like this are part and parcel of a society where equal treatment of the genders is still laughed off as a pipe dream - when a male character complains about dressing like a woman as "being humiliating" and a female character who is supposed to be his teacher (and therefore an authority figure) decides to abase herself by stripping in order to "make amends" because "if I'm embarrassed then it's okay if you're embarrassed" ... this is supposed to be entertainment? It doesn't actually help to see the inherent assumption that all young men are uncontrollably horny sex fiends that will attack random passersby at the slightest provocation -- even if Yuuki actually *isn't* - which sounds about right, given that he's voiced by a female actress and looks more like a flat-chested girl than a guy anyway, something you get to see in way too much detail halfway through this film.

Right about the time our teacher offers to show off her own naked body as recompense for the ban on pornographic material in the women's dorms, a mere six minutes and forty-five seconds into this OVA, I was ready to ask these animators to abase *themselves* in retaliation for the embarrassment of the viewer watching this ... and this OVA goes far deeper down the rabbit hole from there, with the Ms. Ayana humiliating herself further and further while Yuuki just goes along with it as a matter of something that just "can't be helped" in a ridiculously skewed expression of that quintessential Japanese ethos of shikata ga nai, which seems very strange when paired with what essentially for about two minutes has suddenly become a replay of the very not-safe-for-work movie Secretary.

Paired with entire conversations where Yuuki must interact with his female classmates while they're stark-naked coming out of the dormitory's communal bath, as apparently no one has any shame in this universe except the lone male character - and then Ms. Ayana "takes the bullet" when that particular female student (Takabane) essentially tackles the in-drag Yuuki for lesbian sex, which has to be one of the dumbest justifications for not-quite-onscreen student-teacher action ever - and we're supposed to think this is funny and/or a turn-on! This makes me openly wonder if the creators of this franchise have met any actual women outside the voice actresses they're paying to voice the characters. But hey, it's ecchi, and this stuff is to be expected and accepted, right?

This reminds me quite a bit of those old 90s U-Jin OVAs - lots of clumsily-written titillation that just seems embarrassing and horribly stupid when detached from the halcyon glow of ignorant youth and not actually understanding or knowing how actual women behave in the real world (and yes, folks, that includes real-world Japan so don't think these creators are escaping scrutiny that easily). It's not quite pornography (any close-ups are averted by lighting effects rather than pixelation) but the writing level certainly belongs there, something any screenwriter with any self-respect should consider an insult. Much of the blame here lands at the feet of director / script writer / storyboarder Hiromitsu Nakazawa, whose credentials generally involve middling series such as K, Princess Lover!, Seitokai Yakuindomo (the latter two solidifying a specialty in the harem genre) - this is by far the least family-friendly of his works, as well as, likely, the least of his works in general.

I'd discuss the technical merit of this film if it had any, since, especially as far as animation is concerned, all the women in this move almost precisely like the blow-up dolls they're clearly based on. There's one or two throw-away moments that elicit genuine chuckles (such as Yuuki attempting to put on a pair of panties and falling over in failure), but it's safe to say that we likely won't be seeing this wretched paean to adolescent onanism again, not after class, not at all.

Poorly written, poorly conceived, and clearly intended for chauvinistic young men who want to see women abase themselves and act like bimbo porn stars, without springing for the actual pornography. I guess if you want unrelenting fan service and nothing else you might give this another star or two, but there's more than enough shows like this already on the market and most of them might are better written. — Carlos Ross

Recommended Audience: ABSOLUTELY NOT FOR CHILDREN. While not strictly hentai, this promo OVA skirts the line -- a female teacher strips naked in front of a male student and has sex with a female student, all onscreen, though any contact below the belt is heavily implied rather than shown. Probably aimed at older teen males in its native Japan, this would qualify as adults-only in many other jurisdictions. MAL describes the nudity in this as 'mild' which strikes me as hilarious as it's nearly constant and the only part of the body not shown are genital areas.